The French Impressionist Georges Seurat
By Matthew J. Blair
The Student Will Be Learning the Following:
-Introduction to the French Impressionist Period
-Introduction to Georges Seurat the Post-Impressionist Painter
-Introduction to Pointillism Method of Painting
The impressionism term was first used in 1874
by a Journalist who was ridiculing a landscape painting of Claude
Monet, called impression-Sunrise(shown on the right). A movement
in painting that originated in France in the late 19th century.
Impressionist painters were considered radical because the were
changing the rules of picture-making that had been set and uncompromised
by earlier generations of painters. Instead of doing the traditional
theme of painting historical events, the painted from their life
around them. The painted from a moment, capturing the color as
they saw it and not from what art critics wanted them to see and
paint. Capturing the moment through the sole use of light and
color was under lining idea behind the impressionist movement,
they found the paintings captured a fresh and original vision.
They often painted from a landscape so they could observe nature
closely using sunlight as a natural form of light on their subjects.
The impressionist style had very unique characteristics to give
the painting a sense of spontaneity.The implied painterly techniques
like unbroken brush strokes of bright un- mixed colors, This gave
the surface texture that added to the quality of the painting
that was much different from early paintings where the paint is
carefully blended given making the surface smooth which was favored
by most art collectors and critics of the time. What I want you
to do is use the link below and look at several different paintings
start with earlier work and then look impressionist painters like
Monet, Renoir, or dega and see if you can see how impressionist
paintings differ from those earlier paintings.
The Post-impressionist Georges Seuret introduced
in innovative style of painting called pointillism at the eighth
and final impressionist exhibition in 1886. Georges Seurat lived
between 1859-1891, even though he is considered a impressionist
painter his painting are much different then his peers. His painting
did not only rely on the impressions that light and color had
on the painting but instead he embraced how the color and light
would effect the picture as a whole; to solve the problem of the
picture plane becoming flat due to impressions of paint he systematically
organize the painting to create a pictorial order giving his painting
depth. The free and fluent play of his color was disciplined into
a calculated arrangement so the paining is given a sense of design,
which separates him from his peers instead painting from what
you see to be the true sense of color and painting it for the
color sake and not formulizing it to fit the picture plane see
the viewer is allowed to work through the painting and indentfying
the forms in his picture. His counterparts did not do this in
their paintings the paintings are formless and rely on the viewer
to gather the color information and make sense of it. The painting
that introduced his use of the picture plane and pointillism was
in titled "Sunday Afternoon on the island of La grande jatte"(shown
on the right). This painting is much different from those painting
that were done by his peers I won't you to use the link below
and see if you can identify the difference between his use of
impressionist theory to the web site you looked at above before
that exhibited his peers work. The purpose of this is not for
you to his paintings as being better, but to see how his use of
this revolutionary new theory has been taken further and given
a system to how color can be used as impressions and form.
The method of painting introduced by Seurat
entitled "divisionism" or "pointillism" in
which dots of color that are systematical distributed on a white
background that remain partially exposed and hence visual function.
To look at his painting from afar The eye does not see each individual
dot of color, instead the eye collects the color and makes a form
or an image. You can relate this theory to pixels on your television
or computer screen, there are millions of pixels or dots of color
in these formats, the eye does not see these individual color
but instead collects them to appear as an image. With that in
mind Seurat is thought to be the fore runner for this theory,
that is used in everything from televisions to photoengravings
and digital imaging. If you would like to experiment with pointillism
follow the link below to get instruction on how to create your
own pointillism project.
The purpose of my web site was not to give you all the facts
and fictions about impressionism. Instead I wanted you to know
what to look for when your looking at art from this period. Georges
Seurat and the French Impressionist changed the way we look at
art, and perceived how we go about creating art. The purpose of
my Cyber tour was for you to understand that he just didn't come
up with the idea to putting dots all over his paintings, that
he created a system of painting. And how his system of painting
changed the way we deal with color to this day. I believe this
period of painting to be one of the most important movements in
art to this day, it changed art forever.
Images used are from www.Artchive.com